Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak today to the bill. When I read the title of the bill, an act respecting family homes situated on first nations reserves, the word “respecting” strikes me because what is absolutely missing out of this legislation is respect for the independence and sovereignty of our first nations people.
I have sat here and listened to my colleagues across the way say that they have been consulting for years. However, if we consult but we do not hear, do not absorb and do not adapt to what we are going to do, then it is not listening.
What we have here is a total side-stepping of the key issues facing our first nations communities. It is just so the Conservatives can go to the United Nations and say that they have done something. As we know, the United Nations has been urging the government to take action to address the matrimonial rights on first nations lands for years and years and it has failed.
This reiteration of legislation fails once again on fundamental values that we hold dear and that the government committed to when they met with the leaders from the first nations communities. One of them is consultation. Consultation does not just mean getting to speak and then going home and then doing exactly what one intended to do all along.
Second, there is that fundamental right that has been recognized in Canadian Parliament of our first nations to self-governance and the right of sovereignty over their own land. This legislation shows utter disrespect for those values and disrespects the very people the government says it will try to help.
If I were a woman living on first nations lands, I would ask what I need the government to address. First, I do not need a patronizing piece of legislation. Second, what I need is for the government to address the issues and to help to fund programs in order to build strong families and strong communities.
I hear the mantra over and over again from my Conservative colleagues about how the fundamental core of Canadian society, and especially of their platform, is the family. I agree with them because I think there is nothing as important as family. When we have strong families we have strong communities.
However, when we get legislation like this that does not even address the key issues facing our first nations communities, we begin to realize that my colleagues across the way have one set of rules for their own families and another set of rules for families, whether they are first nations, newcomers or the hundreds and thousands of Canadian families separated from their loved ones because of the government's policies and living in many different countries.